Thrashing limbs, bloodied ocean and the shell-crushing teeth of the most-feared creature in the sea: this my friends, is Shark Week.

Broadcast annually for a quarter-century, the shockingly educational and often voyeuristic week of shark-oriented programming has dominated American airwaves each summer, courtesy of the Discovery Channel.

The combination of courageous camerawork, melodramatic music and terrifying facts – a shark can smell a single drop of blood in an Olympics-sized pool! – has been a ratings boon for Discovery since its inception. Last year, the Andy Samberg-hosted Shark Week had 26.6 million viewers.

Shark Week executive producer Brooke Runnette said the ratings goldmine was conceived at a cocktail party with some of Discovery's earliest employees, including company president Clark Bunting. The idea was written on a napkin.

For the past 24 summers, the network has hosted shows including: Teeth of Death, In Search of the Golden Hammerhead, The Man Who Loves Sharks, Shark Shooters, Blood in the Water and Jaws Comes Home.

In response to this audience-attracting move, a small contingent of shark advocates routinely criticize the weekly event and online petitions for a boycott have been made.

Fighting televised sensationalism is a tough ask, but in recent years, Discovery has made moves to dispel shark myths and increase awareness of their plight by partnering with conservation group Oceana and speaking with scientists to ensure accuracy of their programming.

"People are quite obviously a greater danger to sharks than the other way around, so I talk to them about how we can show that or how we can talk about that," Runnette said.

Sharks have been around for 400m years, but 70m sharks per year are killed for sport, for their fins or as by-catch in fishing.

In 2010, senator John Kerry partnered with the Discovery Channel to pass the Shark Conservation Act of 2010, which makes it illegal to remove fins or possess shark fins within 50 miles of the US coast.

Shark Week features people who like to do things like this. Photograph: Don Carpenter/National Pictures

• Disclosure: I interned at Discovery Communications between 2010 and 2011.